But we have cap space this year, so that makes the Eberle trade even more puzzling. We traded a 50+ point player for a 30 point player who offers really nothing that the Oilers need. There was no need to downgrade in the off-season and right now the only player on the entire Oilers roster that looks better than last year is Nurse. Teams are gunning for them and not looking past them like they used to. They got a number of career years out of players and right now the Oilers offensive ability is pitiful. If the McDavid line doesn't score at least twice the Oilers lose because while the second line might chip in a goal, the bottom 6 will not score. Period. The Oilers are pretty bad in basically every facet of the game this year and they simply don't have the depth to overcome such slumps by the team.
Frequently during the summer I harped on the point that the Oilers didn't plug any of the holes in the roster (and in fact made one in a trade) and people kept telling me "Oh, well the Blues/Preds/Ducks all have injury issues too so they'll struggle..." Well guess what, they aren't. And I've been told "They're only 5 points out of a playoff spot!" yeah well if they don't pick up any points today it'll be more than that.
30th place 12.5% into the season is simply not acceptable for this team. Blame it on bad luck, shooting percentages, scoring chances, blah blah blah... This team isn't good enough and is frequently getting outworked and outskated. The former is at least something that can be rectified, but when the majority of your roster is slow, it's not so easy to fix the speed problem.
Simply put, Chia made the roster worse in the offseason and now the team is worse.
I liked Eberles play last year during the regular season. He has his weaknesses but overall helped the team IMO. His play in the playoffs was awful but also not as bad as some made out. The trade for Strome was Chiarelli being proactive for the cap and maximising the return. However hard that is to accept right now. Chiarelli could not put the Oilers too far back in their cap management and the deal in terms of cap/resource terms is a good deal. Eberle, while helpful last year, was clearly struggling and not gelling well with the team. Eberle himself is quoted as saying he needed a fresh start post trade many many times. I am happy for him but the move to trade him was absolutely necessary.
They had more players with down years than those with career years if I remember correctly. Including Eberle, RNH, Lucic, and Pouliot.
The secondary scoring will score. Its the nature of secondary scoring to be somewhat streaky. Will it score as much as we want? Hopefully. But also remember we are paying guys like McDavid and Leon far more money than they should be getting to offset the lack of secondary scoring. you can get 4 good players for the same amount of money we are spending on just 2.
The Oilers are not bad at every aspect and have good depth as a generalization in the organization. A weak RW and missing Sekera hurts but is normal for most teams to deal with.
6 of the top 10 teams from last year are outside the playoffs this year. The Oilers are not unique in their issues.
They are outshooting their opponents at a very high rate among other things and are not really getting outworked out skated. The speed issue is overblown and would have been more apparent last year as well if true. Eberle is not a speedster and our faster players are the secondary scorers you are crapping on: Cagullia, Slepyshev, Kassian... So saying speed is an issue and secondary scoring is incredibly contradictory.
